


Bone Deep

by Anonymous



Category: Bad Samaritan (2018), Jessica Jones (TV)
Genre: Emetophobia, Gore, M/M, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 00:35:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20957525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Neglect, Kilgrave decides, requires punishment. Punishment doesn't always enforce the ideas we want it to.





	Bone Deep

**Author's Note:**

> Anyway Catpoop and I were discussing this idea and decided we'd both try our own take on it. This is mine go read theirs

When Kilgrave comes home, he's bleeding.

"Holy shit, what _ happened _ to you?" Cale quickly averts his gaze, blocking his line of sight with his hand as his lover stands awkwardly in front of the door.

"Some punk tried to short-change me in a… well it doesn't matter what we were doing, he was withholding money," says Kilgrave. He's got a black eye and an utterly split lip, and it looks like there's more blood dripping from his mouth than there should be. Cale tries not to harp on it. "So, naturally I ordered his bodyguard to take it from him, and… as it turns out, he didn't need a bodyguard."

"Serves you right- _ ah-ah-ah! _Not on the carpet!" Cale reprimands when he catches Kilgrave step forward from the corner of his eye.

"Oh, come on! Aren't you going to come to me?" Kilgrave calls incredulously. Cale rolls his eyes. "Check everything's alright? Give me a kiss for my bravery?"

Cale swallows anxiously. His mind keeps telling him to _ look, _ over and over _ look, look look look, you have to look, _but he forces his gaze to remain trained on the China cabinet.

"Kevin, you know I can't." He says sternly. "Just please go wash up, I'll be in with ice in a minute."

At first, Kilgrave doesn't respond, and a few more agonizing seconds pass by where Cale wonders just how much more of this he can take, until finally he hears a sharp and resounding, _ "Fine!", _a few heavier-than-necessary footsteps, and the slam of the bathroom door.

Cale finally breathes again.

_ Arsehole, _ Kilgrave thinks as he runs the tap, _ more concerned about his precious rug than me. _ He waves his hand under the water to make sure it's warm, then starts splashing his face. So what, if Cale couldn't look at a little blood without feeling the craving for a little more? Shouldn't he set aside that little inconvenience to offer some care and support to his _ wounded _partner?

Once he feels relatively sure his lip has bled all it can for now and the water he washes it with falls back into the sink mostly clear, Kilgrave straightens up in the mirror and peers into his mouth. Just as suspected, one of his canines is relatively shattered, pushing into his gums at an odd angle.. _ That's always the way with Cale, though, _ he thinks as he grips the offending tooth. _ He cares more about his own sickness than anything else. Repressing it, controlling it, dancing around it, washing it away if he can- a much grander romance than I can ever hope to have with him. _ He smirks to himself- then _ twists _until the gums let go of the broken tooth.

He looks down at the little piece of bone in his hand. Cracked right down the middle and beginning to fall apart, it's covered almost entirely in blood, with little specks of flesh still clinging to the roots.

Kilgrave closes his palm around it.

"Honey? You still in here?" He hears from the door. Kilgrave quickly drops his arm to his side as the door swings open, Cale bustling in with a small ice pack. Kilgrave puts on his best smile.

"Look! I got all cleaned up for you, just like you asked."

"And you did a great job." Cale says, finally pressing a kiss to his sore lips, before gently placing the ice pack against his eye.

That night, Cale finds Kilgrave in the bedroom, doing something he doesn't think he's_ ever _done before.

"Are you.. _making the_ _bed?" _He asks incredulously, while his partner smoothes the comforter.

"Well, not exactly." Kilgrave says, "We are about to just mess it back up again after all. No, just fluffing things up, making everything nice and cozy- you know, how you like it."

Cale smiles despite himself, and goes to Kilgrave with another kiss.

"Save that another minute,* Kilgrave says before Cale can reach him, "Let me just go brush the pearly whites, and then you can put your mouth anywhere you like."

Cale wakes up with a gasp.

He needs to catch his breath. It's alright, he tells himself, just a dream. Just a horrible dream, as always, and now it's gone. It's gone. It's gone. He stares at the ceiling, and when he feels his breathing has evened out enough, he turns over and closes his eyes, sliding his hand under his pillow to add some support.

He freezes when his finger touches something_ wet. _

He's pretty sure his heart stops. _ It's fine, _ he tells himself once it starts back up again, _ it's just your imagination. _ He'd woken up in the middle of the night just last week, and Kilgrave had to (try to, and inevitably fail) stay up with him because he kept _ thinking _ he felt insects crawling all over him. A month ago he'd become so utterly convinced he could hear police sirens that he'd attempted to abscond, only for Kilgrave to order him back to bed. _ There's nothing wet under your pillow, _ he assures himself, lifting his head and gently elevating the cushion, _ you're going to see nothing under your pillow, and then you can go back to sleep. _

What he finds under his pillow is not nothing. What he finds under his pillow is, in fact, a massive chunk of white bone with red splotches all over it with little dots of pink flesh.

Cale shoots out of bed and sprints to the bathroom. Unfortunately, he doesn't make it all the way to the toilet before the tile floor- and his t-shirt and sweatpants- end up covered in sick. He shakily sits down, not sure what else to do now. _ Where did it come from, _ he thinks, but another part of his mind says _ look what you did. Look what you did this time. Look at what a mess you made. Was Kevin lying next to you? _

Oh. He'd rushed out of bed so fast he hadn't even looked, hadn't even thought to listen for whether or not he was snoring, hadn't even- _ no, _ he thinks, pressing his hands against his eyes, _ no, it couldn't be, it can't be, I'd remember. I always remember. _

He sees a flash of blood and bone in his mind, and something warm and prickly bubbles in his chest.

He throws off his tarnished clothes as he sobs, carefully placing them in the bathtub. The sight of what's left on the floor makes him gag, but he averts his gaze and goes back out into the hall.

He pauses in front of the bedroom door. He doesn't want to go in, doesn't want to see what might be there- or_ not _ there- but he simply _ must, _it's going to happen eventually anyway. Why put it off an hour by cleaning the bathroom when it's important now? He finally gathers the strength to push the door open, and slowly pads back in.

There's definitely a body still in bed. Cale wills himself forward, praying for his lovers' safety. Before he gets too close, he realises he's still harshly sobbing. The form is slumped awkwardly, his head at an odd angle, his arm draped over the side of the bed, and Cale has to close his eyes for a moment while his mind flashes images of snapped necks and twisted limbs-

And then he hears a sharp _ snore. _

Cale lets out a breath of exasperation. He wipes his eyes, then turns to grab a new t-shirt from the dresser, his hands shaking violently. His body is crying out, the fear and paranoia being instantly replaced by adrenaline and cravings.

He knows who did this to him.

He knows who to take it out on.

He pulls the t-shirt over his head, then wanders out into the kitchen. He wonders, in his daze, as the approaches the counter, why they keep their knives out in a regular knife block, instead of in a locked cabinet or something. Probably old habit from when he lived alone. And of course Kevin was often want to disappear for days on end- what would Cale do then? He reaches for one of the smaller serrated ones, and everything in his body calls out to feel bones break beneath his hands, to see red blood stain white. He can practically taste his own adrenaline. His fingertips feel wet.

Cale has never liked gore. As long as he can remember, he's been repulsed by it, long before any of_ this _ started- when other boys hit the age where they became interested in horror movies, he'd covered his eyes and hid under blankets. But ever since his little _ incident, _ it was like smoking cigarettes or eating yourself sick- no one who did it actually _ enjoyed _ it, but it was so utterly addicting he knew he'd never be free of it again.

_ At least it'll be a nightmare, _ he thinks, _ for the both of us. _

By the time he returns to their room, his little knife in hand, all his tears have dried. Kevin still snores peacefully.

Cale doesn't feel_ true _relief, though, until Kilgrave shrieks.


End file.
